1st Counselor/Nursery Leader

Our ward does not operate like any other ward I've been in except for the wards I served in on my mission. It's probably for that reason that Scott and I often comment to each other about how our current callings remind us of being in the mission field. In one ward on my mission, my companion and I taught the Gospel Principles class and the other sisters taught Primary because we didn't have enough people to cover those callings. Our current ward is in much better shape than that, but still pales in comparison to the wards I grew up in.

For example, when I was still in the YW presidency, we had a president, two counselors, and a secretary. It seems like most wards usually have three teachers assigned to the YWs too. That doesn't sound too bad, right? It just meant that we had to plan the Sunday lessons in addition to the Tuesday night activity. Unfortunately, the other counselor and the secretary usually came to church once a month and to mutual once every three or four months. So then it was just the Pres and me and 20-30 young women. We were doing pretty well considering, until I was released and called into the Primary presidency. That was almost two months ago and poor Hermana Mejia is still essentially doing the YW program by herself.

Now I'm a counselor in the Primary presidency, and our president has decided that she wants the presidency to also be the teachers of the primary (conveniently we only have three primary classes and the nursery). It just so happens that I was assigned to be over the nursery. So I'm now in the nursery every week except the second Sunday when I do sharing time in the Primary. I haven't particularly cared for this arrangement, mostly because I feel like I have no idea what's going on in the Primary. Last time I did sharing time, I totally messed up the schedule because I just didn't know what was supposed to happen when.

Things in the nursery have also been a little rocky at times. The current nursery leader is an older lady who seems to be a convert. I get the impression that she hasn't had much experience in the church outside of the nursery, where she has apparently been for at least the last five years. She hasn't been in the habit of teaching a lesson or doing singing time, and that is something that the President really wanted me to change. So over the last several weeks, I have been trying to acclimate our nursery kids (and the nursery leader) to class time, singing time, etc. Some of the low points of my time in nursery include the day that the nursery leader got mad at me for not besandole (greeting her with a kiss) the week before, the lesson where none of the kids stayed in their chairs or paid attention, and the singing time when the nursery leader commented about how bored the kids seemed to a parent that was in there. I had a streak of several weeks when I went home from church and cried on my bed.

Last week was my first week where I felt like things went pretty well. The Primary chorister asked me to fill in for her at the last minute, so I decided to teach my lesson and do nursery singing time in between the Primary singing times. The Primary singing times went pretty well (except I don't know the Spanish words that well yet), but nursery is where I felt really encouraged. Our lesson was on trees, plants, and flowers. I kept it short and simple, and I brought an apple to show them the seeds inside. That was a big hit! I cut it towards the end of the lesson and all the kids were still eating their apple slices by the time I was done. All four kids sitting in their chairs, munching quietly on a slice of apple - what a heavenly sight! Singing time was also our best yet. For the last few weeks I've been working on some visual aids for nursery singing time and I finally had some ready to use last Sunday. Our nursery kids don't really even talk yet, so singing is asking too much. Here are the things I used to help the kids participate in singing time:

• I made some little stars for them to hold up during "I Am Like A Star"
• I made a dad, mom, brother, and sister to hold up during "We Are A Happy Family".
• I topped some popsicle sticks with foam stars and wrote each of their names on one. They love getting to picking a name.
• I made little fishes that I taped to a blue piece of cardstock. Each fish has the name of a song we'll sing. Once a child's popsicle stick is picked, they get to come up and pick a fish off the board.
• I made a CD with just the songs that I wanted to use for nursery on it (I wrote the track number next to the song name on the back of each fish and I recently added the page number in the children's songbook because I usually need to see the words in Spanish).
• Musical instruments. Our stake gave us a set of musical instruments last week and it was a hit. Scott passed them out to the kids when we were singing "Sharing a toy is fun to do, fun to do, fun to do".
• My husband. Scott was nice enough to come help me in the nursery after he was done with his resposibilities in YM. He was a big help!

I think our little nursery kids are starting to get hang of these nursery songs, and I'm starting to get the hang of how to make them fun for them. My mom helped me realize that at that age it's not really about singing the songs as much as participating in the songs.